Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

mcsweeneys.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#41

Post by lxgr »

adolph wrote: post #23
exe34 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i suppose you could make a $10 donation to the site and they could give you free coupons for articles.

The coupons could be on a cryptographic ledger so you have access to it from mobile/desktop/family members and any article could ask for payment from it or maybe different pricing for different sales funnel entry points. I think this is what Brave browser has set up, but I havnt been motivated enough to inquire.

Or they could just be… in a regular old database of the issuer, who is the one that will validate them anyway when you redeem them for articles?

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#42

Post by lxgr »

exe34 wrote: post #17
red_admiral wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions" become unecono…

i suppose you could make a $10 donation to the site and they could give you free coupons for articles.

If the articles are still free for everyone, sure! If not, that’s not a donation, but rather a regular payment for goods and services.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#43

Post by jonhohle »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #38
airstrike wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it would bypass the limit, but if you kept doing it then it'd probably accumulate free articles still and stop working at which point one could perhaps try visiting example.com../page

The reason the trailing dot works is that it represents the implicit root DNS node. Browsers do the dumb thing and consider it a different domain, but AFAIK there's no good reason not to canonicalize the domain name. All that to say, no, you sadly can't add another trailing dot.

I had never thought about having a local search domain so something like google.com.mynetwork. would resolve (the tailing dot prevents search domain lookups). Would a browser allow that internal site to access google.com cookies (since the lookup would be for google.com, no trailing dot). I suppose that would only work for unsecured traffic anyway so maybe not a huge attack vector.

Edit to add: if you have web services that are resolved via DNS, it may be a performance advantage to configure clients with the trailing dot. A lifetime ago we ran into intermittent latency issues when some DNS resolvers would try to search before checking the canonical entry.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#44

Post by hn_version_0023 »

akulbe wrote: post #6
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #5

When I ask older family members where they were or how they reacted when some important event happened, they usually say something like, busy with real life. Being glued to the news is a modern phenomenon, it’s not the required state of being

I stopped watching and reading the news, in general. I have some friends who balked at the idea when I mentioned it. They'd say, "Oh, but how do you keep up on important news?" I don't. My life is better for letting it go. If something is genuinely important, and I really need to know - I always end up finding out somehow.

Real news has always traveled by word-of-mouth very rapidly. I am also trying to give it up— it’s definitely a difficult battle missing out on that dopamine fix (or whatever it is )— but I continue to struggle!

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#45

Post by rightbyte »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #40
rightbyte wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is usually better to read about stuff like months later when the dust have settled. Watching CNN lazer focus on some "developing story" with almost nothing to talk about but gossip makes my head hurt. If the local bridge is closed due to X people tell you.

Have you found a good place to read about slightly less current events? I feel like most articles are little salami slices of events as they occur, without context.

Not really, not on the internet, sadly.

On paper there are some semimonthly environmentalist magazines my wife subscribe to, and the news coverage in those is quite settled and nice in that way. I guess magazines would be the place to look, but those seem to be dying off or are losing quality...

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#46

Post by m463 »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #5

When I ask older family members where they were or how they reacted when some important event happened, they usually say something like, busy with real life. Being glued to the news is a modern phenomenon, it’s not the required state of being

I remember exactly where I was when challenger exploded. And when the twin towers came down. (both of them involved seeing a television)

nowadays it seems we are notified when sitting in front of a computer.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#47

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #38
airstrike wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it would bypass the limit, but if you kept doing it then it'd probably accumulate free articles still and stop working at which point one could perhaps try visiting example.com../page

The reason the trailing dot works is that it represents the implicit root DNS node. Browsers do the dumb thing and consider it a different domain, but AFAIK there's no good reason not to canonicalize the domain name. All that to say, no, you sadly can't add another trailing dot.

> Browsers do the dumb thing

I could use more browser dumb things like this.

Like when the browser won't ever forget that you once visited an HSTS server at this domain and now+forever won't let you visit the http server (at the same domain).

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#48

Post by lxgr »

akira2501 wrote: post #33
remoquete wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality journalism, and, even more importantly, free journalism (as in neutral or unbiased), costs money. I think a subscription is a very low effort compared to the kind of risks and hard work top reporters go through. Another angle: prose and code describe facts using slightly different languages, but would you say that code (or institutions capable of publishing code at scale) shouldn't exist or that they should "…

Journalism does not cost money. Running a company that is attempting to profit off of publishing costs money. Or have you never read anything produced at no benefit to the author that has ever informed you? I think you're putting the cart before the horse, and advertising supported journalism has always existed, and these companies would rather collect CPM from google than do legitimate placement of ads in their own…

Of course journalism costs money.

Sometimes it’s just not directly paid (most commonly: ad-supported journalism), or even paid for by the journalist with their time and opportunity cost of not selling it to somebody that does charge for it (blogs etc.)

If none of these are applicable, chances are it’s PR, not journalism.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#49

Post by wizzwizz4 »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #40
rightbyte wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is usually better to read about stuff like months later when the dust have settled. Watching CNN lazer focus on some "developing story" with almost nothing to talk about but gossip makes my head hurt. If the local bridge is closed due to X people tell you.

Have you found a good place to read about slightly less current events? I feel like most articles are little salami slices of events as they occur, without context.

There's https://tedium.co/what-is-tedium, but that's just one site.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#50

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

m463 wrote: post #46
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #5

When I ask older family members where they were or how they reacted when some important event happened, they usually say something like, busy with real life. Being glued to the news is a modern phenomenon, it’s not the required state of being

I remember exactly where I was when challenger exploded. And when the twin towers came down. (both of them involved seeing a television) nowadays it seems we are notified when sitting in front of a computer.

My wife didn't know about Sept11 attacks until I brought the kids home in the early evening. No TV and she didn't like commercial radio.

I didn't find out about OK City until the following Monday, driving back to classes.

I was playing hookey from something and watching the Challenger launch at home. So I caught that one.

Post reply on HN